The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Paperback:  "I want you to find out who in the family murdered Harriet, and who since then has spent almost forty years trying to drive me insane."

Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared off the secluded island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger family.  There was no corpse, no witnesses, no evidence.  But her uncle, Henrik, is convinced that she was murdered by someone in her own family - the deeply dysfunctional Vanger clan.  Disgraced journalist Mikael Blomkvist is hired to investigate, but when he links Harriet's disappearance to a string of gruesome murders from forty years ago, he needs a competent assistant - and he gets one:  computer hacker Lisbeth Salander - a tattoed, truculent, angry girl who rides a motorbike like a Hell's Angel and handles makeshift weapons with the skill born of remorseless rage.
This unlikely pair form a fragile bond as they delve into the sinister past of this island-bound, tightly-knit family.  But the Vangers are a secretive lot, and Mikael and Lisbeth are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves - and each other.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008) is the first book in the praise-worthy Millennium trilogy.  It won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, the Barry Award for Best Crime Novel, the Macavity Award for Best First Novel, another Barry Award for Mystery/Crime Novel of the Decade, the ITV3 Crime Thriller Award for International Author of the Year, UK, the Exclusive Books Boeke Prize, South Africa, and the Galaxy British Book Award for Crime Thriller of the Year, UK.  It was nominated for the Anthony Awards in the Best Novel category.

About the author:  Karl Stig-Erland "Stieg" Larsson (1954-2004) was a Swedish journalist and writer.  He is best known for writing the "Millennium trilogy" of crime novels, which were published posthumously.  Larsson lived much of his life in Stockholm and worked there in the field of journalism and as an independent researcher of right-wing extremism.

He was the second best-selling author in the world for 2008, behind Khaled Hosseini.  The third novel in the Millennium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, became the most sold book in the United States in 2010 according to Publishers Weekly.  By March 2015, his series had sold eighty million copies worldwide.

His family and Norstedts have instituted an annual award of 200.000 Swedish Krona in memory of him since 2009.  The prize is awarded to a person or organization working in Stieg Larsson's spirit.  The recipient in 2015 was Chinese Yang Jisheng for his notable work, Tombstone, which describes the consequences of the three years of the Great Chinese Famine.

Rating:  5/5